Stormwater utility fund is great idea

COLUMN: It’s nice to see something being done right in local government.

As a citizen it is easy to see where things go wrong, but perhaps less easy to see when things go right. I want to take a moment and congratulate the Salisbury City Council for doing something right.

In November, the council voted unanimously to create a much-needed fund for dealing with stormwater.

Salisbury is not yet required by Maryland to do this, but if we grow any bigger — and you know we will — we will be required to have a fund in place for stormwater.

Wisely, the city council acted first and soon will vote on how to structure the fund.

Some skeptics have dubbed this a “rain tax,” but that makes about as much sense as calling the cost of snow plows to clear snow off the roads a “snow tax.”

The city must deal with both stormwater and snow.

This fund will generate money specifically to deal with stormwater— both water flow after rain storms and pollutants in stormwater run-off.

Stormwater collects all kinds of pollutants as it flows across paved surfaces, so the city is creating this fund to repair and improve the storm drainage system as well as prevent future clean-up costs from floods and polluted waters within Salisbury’s municipal limits.

The Wicomico River is one of our city’s biggest natural assets; keeping it clean just makes common sense.

I would love to see more people enjoying this town’s water in their kayaks, canoes or by swimming, but these require clean water.

The storm drains we have are clearly in need of repair, since flooding occurs after even small rains, both downtown and in other areas. The drainage system on my road dates back to the 1920s and other parts of town are even older.

Flat land and our many creeks and ponds make stormwater more important to Salisbury than it would be elsewhere.

And don’t forget how much of the city is built literally right up to the edge of the water, only compounding the drainage problems the city must contend with after storms.

Taking care of stormwater and keeping the waters clean also saves money in the long run.

It is far cheaper and smarter to invest now in stormwater treatment — before the water gets to the creeks, ponds and river — than it would be to attempt to clean the larger bodies of water.

So this is actually a very wise use of taxpayer dollars that is likely to save us all money in other ways by avoiding clean-up costs in the future.

Only a few places on the Eastern Shore have been proactive enough to have a stormwater fund in place. As the largest urban area on the Shore, it seems right that Salisbury be a leader in this regard.

The City Council is right to be thinking long term about how to address stormwater. It’s nice to see something being done right in local government.

Gina Bloodworth is an associate professor in the department of geography at Salisbury University.